212 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



Copernicus even. Perhaps the first fundamentalist 

 was the early church father, Lactantius, who proved 

 from the bible that the earth was not round. The 

 fundamentalist idea of God was not withered by evo- 

 lution, for Copernicus had killed it long before. 



Indeed, to those who have read the historical books 

 of this great Bible of science, there is very little in- 

 terest to be got out of the fundamentalist God: for 

 science, almost from its start, was able to give man- 

 kind a loftier concept to put in its place, the concept 

 of a great artificer, a first-rate mathematician, an artist 

 to the finger tips, instead of an irritable old gentle- 

 man believing in corporal punishment. 



This bible, like the Christian one, has an old and 

 a new testament; the old ending in gloom and the mut- 

 terings of the minor prophets like Herbert Spencer; 

 the new at once destroying and fulfilling the old. 



The history of science is, then, a poetic search for 

 God, carried out by rummaging among man's old 

 family records, and as such it will be sketched here. 

 Why has so much human energy and imagination gone 

 to the making of this search? Partly because of an 

 honest love of adventure inherent in all energetic 

 human beings to be satisfied by such a search to a far 

 greater degree than by any other means. Money 

 making, making love, sport, politics, all of them bore 

 the truly energetic man; for even when he has 

 squeezed them dry of interest, he will find himself 

 with energy still unused. But all his energy Is needed 

 for the most exciting of all quests, the most exacting 

 and exhausting of all hobbles, the search for truth. 



But there Is another reason besides honest love 



